‘Tis the Season for Garden Salad

Spring has finally sprung in earnest here … Maybe!  We’ve had to cover our plants for fear of frost several times in the past couple weeks, but we’re hoping that’s over!  Our garden is looking great, with the cool-weather crops leading the way.  For me that means the beginning of one of our shortest but bestest seasons:  the season for garden salad!  I love the fresh little sprouts of spring, and this year’s crop is especially vigorous.  Tonight for supper we had salad, salad and more salad — yum!  Pretty traditional, but here’s the ingredients we chose:

Fresh Garden Salad

Mesclun mix
Baby spinach
Baby romaine
Baby bokchoy
Cilantro
Raw Cheddar Cheese (cubed)
Dried cranberries
Sprinkle w/chopped pecans & slightly crushed Rye Triscuits
Dressing: Raspberry vinaigrette

 

Rhubarb Pie & cinnamon’n’sugar dough balls

Joy!  One of the biggest thrills of Spring is the first rhubarb pie of the season, and we had ours yesterday!  I had actually picked the rhubarb Sunday afternoon.  We had spent much of the afternoon working in the garden, getting most of the remaining plants and seeds into the ground.  (We’ve still got tomato plants and corn under the grow lights inside;  we’ll plant them after Memorial Day.)  It was getting windy and cooling down, but having been subjected to several hours of temptation by the lush new growth of the rhubarb plants, I couldn’t help myself:  I went inside and got a knife and a bowl and proceeded to pick just enough of the young shoots to fill a pie!

Last night after work, I quickly rolled out a crust and filled the pie.  I gave the unbaked pie along with baking instructions to my trusty friend, who took them to his place and got the baking started while I walked the few miles to his house for fresh air and exercise.  When I approached his house, I was listening to the cardinals and an oriole singing in the surrounding woods.  But it was the smell of the finished pie that really grabbed my attention!

Rhubarb pie takes me back to my youth, making me think of my Mom and her amazing cooking.  One of the things she always did when baking was roll any extra pie crust into balls, roll them in cinnamon/sugar mix, and bake them alongside the pie.  These “dough balls,” as we unceremoniously refered to them, were always a favorite treat — as if the pie itself were not enough, these were an added bonus!  We had about 8 this time, several of which were eaten immediately, and the remainder of which went with us for lunch today.

As to recipes for Rhubarb pie, here’s an instance where I rely on good ol’ Betty — Betty Crocker cookbook, that is!  Rhubard is so easy to grow and so much fun to eat, so I recommend you ‘go for it’!  Oh — and when picking out plants for your garden, it’s worth the extra effort to get red plants vs. green.  They make everything so much prettier!  Enjoy!

 

Mothers Day meals

Well, today was a lovely Mothers Day — one of the first I’ve spent with my mother in many years!  What a treat!  We were only able to have breakfast with them, but since we’d spent the last several days together that didn’t seem like too little.  It was just a pleasant way to wrap up a wonderful visit, particularly since she had the joy of having grandchildren there, too.

Something happened by way of the food, though … a funny little deja vu, but in this case history really did repeat itself, like a gift from one generation to the next.  I had told my kids a funny story about the time that my Mom, in her sleepiness, had inadvertantly substituted baking soda for baking powder when making us pancakes one morning.  I remember gingerly asking if she had switched her pancake recipe or something — neither my sister nor I wanted to hurt her feelings.  But when she realized what she’d done, we all had quite a laugh.  Well, this morning, I did the same thing while making scones for everyone!  They were positively awful!  We had a great laugh, and then, since we were on a time schedule, quickly made toast to go with our fruit salad!

Late in the morning, we drove to the nearest big town, stopping at the greenhouse on the way to pick up some plants for the garden.  Even (or especially) on a day that feels like autumn, it is uplifting to think about growing food in the garden!

For lunch, we enjoyed a delicious pizza at a local pizzeria.  They made a great crust, but the best part of all was that the pizza was our reward for having won a dance contest a few weeks ago!  It was a cold, rainy day, so the pizza was important to keeping us warm and content on our Mothers Day hike up to the top of a nearby overlook.  The rain made the colors of the rocks and mosses and lichens “pop,” and the trees take on a new look of lushness.  From the overlook we saw a beach down below, so I suggested that we find that beach!  Once back to our car, we drove a bit further up the road and enjoyed another short hike to the beach of lovely white sand.

After our hike, we stopped at the Food Coop to pick up a few essentials, like fresh ginger and dried fruit.  The weather seemed to have inspired lots of folks to visit this community store, and the people in the aisles were as colorful and the food-lined shelves!

For Mothers Day supper, I used up leftovers of brown rice and made a stirfry of onion, ginger, carrots, peas, and broccoli, served with a tomato curry sauce.  While I cooked, my son broke in his new glove playing catch with a friend.  Our meal was lovely and light. 

To me, this was a great day of family time.  And it was also a great day of dining, even with the errors and odd combination of Italian and Indian foods; the juxtaposition of homebaked mistakes, restaurant food and leftovers!  The perfect reflection of the busy life of a working mother who loves good food, good fun and the out-of-doors!

 

Healthful Foods

A friend recently gave me a copy of T.Colin Campbell’s national bestseller, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health.  It’s an amazing compilation of information about how diet affects human health — from heart disease to obesity, diabetes to breast cancer, auto-immune deficiencies to bone, kidney, eye and brain diseases.  The premise of the book is that what you eat can have profound negative or positive affects on the likelihood and extent of such ailments.

In the general sense, this will not come as news to most people.  But this book goes beyond the general sense, which is what made it interesting.  The major conclusions, while based soundly on many decades of research by numerous researchers around the world, would nevertheless be considered daring by mainstream media:

First, on the basis of the effects of animal products on health (not to mention the environment), he advocates eliminating animal products from the diet.  Of course, those of us with veg leanings won’t feel surprised by this, but many people in western cultures will. 

This brought to mind the book Hungry World (Faith D’Aluiso and Peter Menzel, 2007), a photodocumentary comparing a week’s groceries for 30 families in 24 countries, including recipes for meals.  Even for those who anticipate large differences between the wealthy and the poor, it is startling.  Not only the great disparities, but also the difference in proportion of processed vs. whole foods.  While I don’t mean to make less of the degree of poverty, it is interesting how much fresh food many of the families in less wealthy countries eat compared to the diets of average folks in wealthy countries.  It’s disgusting, really, to see all that packaging.  Anyway, to bring it back around to the China Study, of course the obesity rates are higher in “developed” countries, and one would expect that other diet related illnesses might also be.  I’d love to see more China Study-type statistics correlated with the Hungry World profiles.

Second, he explains that in his view, there are powerful corporate forces that have kept this conclusion from the People.  It’s fascinating stuff, reminiscent of the kinds of conspiracy revealed in Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.

The best part is knowing that there are so many nutritious, whole foods out there to eat, and even if you don’t entirely eliminate meat from your diet, you can eat better.  — And it can be truly delicious!

 

Lentil Roast

I got this recipe from my friend Jude.  She made it one time for a birding club potluck, and it didn’t last long on the table.  I came across it when I was going through my favorite recipes in attempt to decide what to make when family visits us later this week.  This is perfect: it’s simple and delicious!  Here are the ingredients:

Jude’s Lentil Roast

1 cup cooked lentils
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 egg
1 can of milk
1/4 cup oil
1 1/2 cups cornflakes
1/2 tsp sage
1 medium onion
salt to taste

Mix it all, put in 8×8 pan, and bake at 325 for an hour.

Enjoy!

 

Frog Eye Salad

The first time I tasted this salad was at a potluck/going away party for a co-worker.  There were so many people there from all over the state that I wasn’t able to find out who made it or what it was called, and in fact, I wasn’t quite sure what was in it!  What WERE those little round balls the size of a beebee?!  I thought maybe they were mutant tapioca or something. 

Whatever was in it — and I was sure it wasn’t entirely healthful — I LIKED it!  So much so that I spent approximately nine years waiting for the answer!  I lurked over every potluck table, hoping to spot it again.  Finally about two years ago, I spotted it:  HURRAY!  This is what I think of as a dessert salad, with Acini de Pepe (those little round balls!) as a base.  I don’t make it very often, but my kids love it, and I must confess, so do I!  This recipe is my adaptation of the one I found on a box of pasta:

Frog Eye Salad

1 box Acini de Pepe pasta, cooked
2 cans mandarin oranges
2 large cans crushed pineapple
2 cups mini marshmallows
one 8 oz. container of coolwhip
2 packages instant pistachio pudding

Cook pasta and cool.  Drain fruit and reserve liquid.  Mix liquid with pudding mix. Fold in cool whip and other ingredients.  Refrigerate at least 3 hours, or better yet, over night.  Beware:  this recipe makes a lot of salad, perfect for a potluck or other gathering, but quite a lot for a small family to eat.  I often cut it in half.

Enjoy!

 

Locavore Fare of the Week: Smelt

It is generally accepted that “when in Rome,” one should “do as the Romans do.”  While I’m not sure I accept this advise without exception, there is of course a lot of wisdom and experience behind it — particularly if doing something out of the ordinary might result in your hanging!  Fortunately, things are not quite that extreme most places, and so following this sage advise can lead to many interesting experiences around immersion into formerly unknown subcultures.  This is as true about food as it is about anything else.  And in fact, two of my most memorable forays into America’s hidden subcultures revolve around food — and in particular, around the hunting and gathering of food!  In a word: fishing!

First, a couple years ago, I went with my kids and a friend to a nearby lakeshore community.  Our goals for the day were to swim, to look at spring flowers, and see if we could catch any whitefish off the pier.  Fortunately, my friend was a seasoned fisherman and brought along equipment for all of us.  Nevertheless, I was wholly unprepared for what I was about to experience.  When we stepped out on that concrete pier, we entered another world.  There were at least 50 other people on the pier:  men, women and children. And I would wager that they had all been there many times before.  They spoke the same “language” of whitefish fishing, they carried similar gear, and like clockwork, when the dusk settled, they all pulled out little lanterns and set them at the pier’s edge.  It was like joining a tribe.  They were reticent in the way the anglers stereotypically are.  But I also felt a kinship, demonstrated most compellingly in our new nearest neighbors’ clear concern that my two kids meet with success.  They gave us little bits of the secret lures that the whitefish were taking today.  They suggested alternative ways of baiting up.  They provided nets for catching and expertly maneuvered them to snag the caught fish.  When we left the pier that night, I felt like I had been allowed not only to peek into the window of another culture, but like I’d been welcomed by actions that spoke louder than the words that were absent.

My second experience with this sort of unique subculture occured just last week when my kids and I once again joined a friend for our first smelting adventure.  At about 10 p.m., we piled out of our vehicle and carrying 5-gallon buckets and sturdy wire nets on long poles, we stumbled to the riverside where about a half dozen other anglers stood with similar gear.  The fish weren’t running yet, so only one man was actually in the river in waders.  Everyone else had staked out a spot on the bank or on the old wooden bridge, and would occasionally run their net through the water from upstream to down.  One lantern provided enough light to perform this work, at least when the fish weren’t running.  Folks chatted quietly in their groups, and occasionally one would shuffle over to chat with us.  We were there about an hour, and during that time several fishermen pulled into the parking lot to see if there was any action.  We took a break by walking down the streambank to the mouth, where we saw a great blue heron wading in the bay, shrouded in mist.  It was an idyllic experience, even though all we caught was a chub and a blunt nosed minnow (which my daughter enjoy keeping in a bucket for observation!)

Admittedly, neither one of these experiences resulted in much food for us.  However, that was beside the point.  For me, it was more about experiencing something new, and experiencing this relatively tiny subculture of people who take very seriously these opportunities to find food in their local environment.  This sort of self-sufficiency is hard to come by in the modern US.  It was also a great example of something I am always telling my kids:  even though we don’t have TV, there are plenty of interesting and infinitely more productive things to do that also have the side benefit of offering time to “veg out”! 

Oh, and by the way, a couple nights later at the tail end of a day of rain, my friend caught 5 gallons of smelt at that same bridge!  I wasn’t there to see it, but did have the opportunity enjoy a taste of the fresh bounty, which was quite good, deep fried in a flour and cracker meal batter.  Evidently, the male smelt run up the river ahead of the females, and males are easier to clean than females (due to the eggs).  So my friend was very thankful to have been there at the very beginning of the night’s run, having waited a full two hours in the cold darkness in hopes that they might just possibly run!

It’s not always true, but it seems that being a successful locavore often depends on being in the right place at the right time!  And it’s not just game species — it’s things like blueberries and raspberries and chokecherries and morels and the list goes on!  But that’s writing for another time.

 

Almost Vegetarian White Chili

Our local natural history association board consists of 7 women and a man, and I love them all for their philosophy that a meeting without food is not worth attending!  The group trades off hosting meetings at members’ homes, and the host provides the main course.  They are all excellent cooks in their own right, and we’ve come to have a feel for each cook’s specialties.  For instance, Marty makes a mean “Marty Burger” on the grill.  And Lora often makes lovely desserts.  And one of Joanna’s favorites is White Bean Chili with turkey burger.  This past weekend, I had a hankering for Joanna’s soup, but decided I’d prefer it without meat.  So here’s my re-write of the Betty Crocker recipe Joanna uses.

Almost Vegetarian White Chili

1 TBSP vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped (1 cup)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 cups chicken broth (this is the “almost” part!  Of course, you can substitute a veg broth.)
4 TBSP chopped fresh cilantro (ya just gotta use fresh… it’s a key ingredient and well worth it.)
4 TBSP lime juice
1 tsp ground cumin
red pepper sauce to taste (I like at least 3/4 tsp)
1 can (11 oz) white hominy, drained
1 can (15 oz) great northern beans, drained
1 can (15 oz) butter beans, drained
2 cups fresh cauliflower cut in bitesized pieces
1/2 cup slivers of fresh red pepper

1. Heat oil in pan over medium heat.  Cook onions and garl in oil, until onions are tender.>
2. Stir in remaining incredients.  Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered 20 minutes.

In my opinion, the key flavors are the fresh cilantro, the lime juice and the tabasco sauce.  The original Betty Crocker menu is too subtle for me — I like the punch of a stronger flavor, so I double the amounts of those three.  Mmmmm!  It’s so good!  Other times, I’ve improvised by adding a bit of leftover brown rice or cooked pearled barley.

 

Maple Granola

I grew up on a small farm in Wisconsin.  We raised sheep, oats, soybeans, corn, and alfalfa, and we had a very large garden which supplied almost all of our vegetables, plus surplus which we sold roadside.  Since the farm had been in place for over a hundred years, there was a well-established apple orchard which supplied us with enough apples to can gallons of cider and many quarts of applesauce and also make apple cider vinegar, dried apples and apple pies and so forth.  We added to the orchard by filling in with dozens of new trees to replace those that had died of old age and to add on additional fruits like cherries and apricots.  In the winter, our attention shifted to the woods, where we cut and stacked firewood for the winter two years off, and where in spring we tapped maple trees and made syrup so that we had many gallons for ourselves and some left over to give as gifts or otherwise part with.  When spring came in earnest, we searched beneath those same trees for morels, a favorite spring mushroom.

So in short, I learned young to enjoy the bounty of the earth.  And I learned that the work that goes into tending this bounty is part of the joy — and responsibility — of human life.  For much of my life thus far, I’ve been fortunate to live in places and ways that allowed me to continue these ingrained habits, albeit at a less intense way than farming.  For the last several years, circumstances have required that I temporarily live in a small town setting, but even here I am not far from vast forests and have access to a lovely, fertile garden plot.

When it comes right down to what’s for lunch, it is not a stretch for me to say that creating delicious foods from nature’s bounty is very much part of my core personality.  Which brings me around to breakfast, since after all, it is a lovely Sunday morning!  I don’t know too many people who can’t find a lot of good to say about the luxury of eating real maple syrup on their pancakes, waffles, French toast — or ice cream, for that matter!  So often, simple ways of serving foods are the best.  But with the bounty of maple syrup at my disposal, I have also learned a certain decadence.  And that is what this recipe represents:  pure, unadulterated indulgence!  If you like real maple syrup and you like homemade granola, you’ll like this, too!

Whispering Pines Maple Granola

3 cups oats
1-1/2 cups wheat germ
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup rolled rye
1 cup coconut
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1/3 cup oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 TBSP sesame seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 (or heat lightly oiled large cast iron skillet to medium on stovetop.) Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Mix wet ingredients together and then pour into dry ingredients until combined.  Place granola mixture into baking pan or skillet and cook until golden brown, stirring as needed.  Serve on vanilla yogurt or with milk, and fresh or dried fruit.

 

Cheesehead

People from Wisconsin have been known to call themselves “cheeseheads” — and if you’ve ever watched a Green Bay Packers football game, you’ve doubtless seen those folks in the crowd wearing the yellow foam rubber cheese wedges on their heads!!  (I wish I could say I’ve never owned one of those, but, well — hey, I grew up in Wisconsin and it’s in the water or something!)

Anyway, the good news is that America’s Dairyland really does have lots of good cheese … or at least, it did when I was a kid.  I remember making periodic journeys to my parents’ favorite dairy.  Just thinking about it, I can smell the raw milk.  Like most cheese “factories,” this small place had a little cheese shop attached to the production floor.  These were always simple little places, usually with several coolers serving as the counters.  We would point through the glass at the cheeses we were interested in and they would serve up thinly sliced samples.  Mmmmm… My parents were fans of the fresh colby.  But the best thing of all, my sister and I thought, was the squeaky-fresh cheese curds!  My dad loves them, too, so I don’t think we ever left a cheese shop without at least a pound.  And as soon as we got in the car, look out:  the bag was open and we were into them!  I haven’t had a decent cheese curd — a squeaky, mild, young curd — since I moved away.  What passes for cheese curds in the grocery stores today is more like funky-shaped mild cheddar with a strange, pasty consistency.  Ick.

Of course many things have changed since I was a kid.  In the seventies and eighties, there were many more small, family farms, but as a result of corporate forces those little family farms that kept my friends and I in new shoes have almost disappeared.  Likewise, many local dairies have been bought up by big companies. 

So the mainstream world of cheese in the US has changed, and surely the same is true in Wisconsin.  But the good news is that there is a growing, underground “artisan” cheese movement in the States, and for anyone who loves cheese this is thrilling.  I’m far from a cheese snob, but still I think my taste in cheese has evolved significantly in the past thirty years.  I wasn’t exposed to many unusual cheeses as a kid, so it’s taken a while for me to experience and appreciate the tastes of cheeses you don’t see in the average grocer’s cooler.  Things like red dragon, brie and the varieties of goat or sheep cheeses.  It took time for some of these cheese to seem palatable, but they really do grow on you.

My latest interest is in finding a source of Halloumi, a cheese indigenous to Cyprus.  I first heard about it two or three months ago listening to American Public Radio’s Splendid Table.  It’s made from a mix of goat and sheep’s milk and is white and layered like mozarella.  What caught my attention was that this cheese can be browned by frying or grilling it!  I’m already a fan of the East Indian paneer cheese, chunks of which taste so good served in korma sauce and the like.  So hearing about this roastable cheese got me very curious!  Unfortunately, so far I haven’t come across it, despite looking while in a couple different large cities.  Evidentally it is being sold in Canada as “hallomi” (minus the “u”) because of a protected designation of origin dispute.

So, if anyone out there knows of a good source, I’d love to hear about it.  (There are several online, but I’d like to find a domestic source … though no doubt those wouldn’t be quite the same as the real thing from Cyprus.) Meantime, I’ll don my foam cheese wedge and keep looking for other interesting cheeses to try!